Crisis in Venezuela: An Analysis of the United States’ Interference

As the crisis in Venezuela escalates uncontrollably for the people, the politicians are in the centre of legitimising themselves as the president of the country. Current president Nicolas Maduro has recently rejected an ultimatum by the European Union to hold a snap elections in the country stating that he would not “cave in to pressure” from those calling for his departure. The European Union issued the ultimatum as the Juan Guaido, the head of Venezuela’s opposition-led National Assembly, declared himself as the country’s interim president . Many European countries such as the UK, Spain, France, Germany, Sweden and Denmark have all recognised Juan Guaidó as the interim president of Venezuela. Portugal, the Netherlands and Belgium have said they will recognize opposition leader Juan Guaido as president if Maduro failed to announce elections.

In addition to that, the biggest support for Juan Guaido is definitely from the United States as President Donald Trump has recognized and endorsed Juan Guaido as the president of Venezuela. Even Ireland has followed a number of other EU countries in recognising Juan Guaido as interim President of Venezuela. Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney said he supports Mr Guaido, the leader of the legislature, “in order for him to call for free, fair and democratic presidential elections”. The United Nations however has rejected Juan Guaido, as the interim president. The UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres responded to a letter written by Guaido seeking humanitarian aid to Venezuela. Guterres reiterated his concern about the impact of the current Venezuelan crisis on the people but however, in regards to Guaido’s request for humanitarian aid, the secretary-general requested to communicate with the Government of Venezuela, which is headed by President Nicolas Maduro . This directly meant that the United Nations are in support of the current government and president Nicolas Maduro.

Nicolas Maduro was sworn as the president on 10th January 2019 after he was re-elected in May 2018 by getting 67.7 % of the vote. This means that by law he is the legitimate leader of Venezuela. In addition to that, the country’s main opposition coalition, the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD), boycotted the election and that basically paved way for Maduro to be re-elected as the president. While many are now recalling for elections, why didn’t the MUD participate in the elections in the first place? They claimed that the elections was rigged in favour of Maduro but the fact that they did not contest shows that they are incapable to be in power and incompetent to run the country. Now there is Juan Guaido from the Voluntad Popular (VP), (Popular Will Party) who declared himself as the president. He was sworn in as leader of the National Assembly and de facto leader of the opposition early in January, at a time when not many in Venezuela had heard of him. It is said that at least 80% of the population in Venezuela have not heard of Juan Guaido. Thus the National Assembly basically elected a president without an electoral mandate which makes unlawful because there is a democratic process for a reason.

Another issue that should be taken into serious consideration in this Venezuelan political crisis is the involvement of the United States. It seems that as though the situation in Venezuela is a question of human rights, democracy and freedom that is built upon only by the National Assembly via the opposition although in reality that the whole move of making Juan Guaido as the interim president of Venezuela was engineered, organized and financed by the United States along with a small group of countries from Latin America and Europe. This definitely shouldn’t come as a surprise as the United States has had a long history of intervening and overthrowing leftist governments in Latin America for many years. Among a few examples are the 1954 US Intervention in Guatemala, 1964 US intervention in Brazil, 1973 US intervention in Chile, 1976 US intervention in Argentina and many others. All these interventions by the United States were coup d’états that were sponsored and engineered by the United States military by supporting right wing leaders or political parties.

The situation in Venezuela is a little different as the United States are not using military intervention yet but are engineering what many media outlets would not call which is a soft coup d’état through Juan Guaido. While many refrain from the word coup, in reality that is the situation in Venezuela at the moment because Juan Guaido is trying to seize power illegally and unlawfully. In addition, the United States seem to be using a similar tactic that was used when they intervened in both Chile and Iraq respectively in 1973 and 2003 by trying to destabilise the economy of Venezuela through economic sanctions before deciding to intervene or invade via military. This is because a destabilised economy would indeed give the United States a strong reason to invade or intervene Venezuela if needed. This was definitely the case in Iraq. Sometimes sanctions that are often used on countries are an act of war because it hurts the most poor and vulnerable sectors of a country’s population. Moreover sanctions are also genocidal and one example is in Iraq when almost 500,000 babies lost their lives due to the sanctions carried out by the United States. A similar trend is being seen in Venezuela as the US-led sanctions has cost the Venezuelan economy at least 6 million USD and this has indeed weakened the country and also the population.

Recently on 29January 2019, the United States has also announced that a new round of sanctions will block almost 7 billions USD in Venezuelan assets. These sanctions that are being carried out by the United States are actually against Venezuela’s state owned oil company Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PdVSA). As a result, all property and interests in property of PdVSA subject to U.S. jurisdiction are blocked, and U.S. persons generally are prohibited from engaging in transactions with the company. The opposition in Venezuela approves the confiscation of the 7 billion USD as it is seen by them as securing assets although in reality it is actually an international theft. As the PdVSA, is an important source of income to Venezuela and while the United States are actually aware of it, the sanctions are a clear indication that the United States are trying to cut off every last source of income available to Venezuela to weakened their economy even more.

Besides that, just like in Iraq the United States would also want to get their hands on Venezuela’s oil via Juan Guaido because it is impossible that the United States are oblivious that Venezuela has one of the largest oil reserves in the world. An additional evidence that the opposition parties in Venezuela are aligning themselves to the United States is the fact that the National Assembly in Venezuela is beginning a process of appointing new board of directors for PdVSA to transfer the controls of Venezuela’s foreign accounts. It is clear that the National Assembly in Venezuela headed by Juan Guaido are not positioning themselves of running the country on behalf of the 30 million Venezuelan people but are instead only invested in securing power and position as well as allowing the United States to intervene in their country’s internal affairs.

The United States are definitely turning Venezuela into their colony and their actions are a demonstration that represents the greatest threat to peace and regional stability of Latin America as a whole. As it is now their custom, they threaten other countries through extortion and coercion so that these countries will recognize a puppet president, which would allow them to take full control of that particular country and exert their continuous influence for years to come. We have seen a similar trend carried by the United States in countries such as Iraq, Iran, and Libya that has led to the devastating effects that remains till this day. This is bound to happen in Venezuela if the opposition leaders led by Juan Guaido are not cautious in aligning themselves wholly to the United States. Although President Nicolas Maduro has not proven himself in leading Venezuela forward, but it has to be understood that US-led sanctions since the Obama Administration has had a huge influence the Venezuelan crisis.

The opposition parties in Venezuela should have shown their will to fight for the interest of the people by not boycotting the election in May last year because the boycott basically meant that they betrayed the people of Venezuela. Personally I am not a Maduro sympathizer but I believe in that a leader should be elected through a democratic electoral process and I also denounce foreign intervention into the internal affairs of a particular country because often times history have shown that a third party intervention by the United States has always brought more negative impacts instead of positive ones. For this reason, I would be on Maduro’s side and would urge other countries to recognise him as the legitimate leader of Venezuela because recognising Juan Guaido would mean recognising the United States colonialism against Venezeula.

Related

Aaron Denison, Research Assistant at the Kuala Lumpur-based Asia-Europe Institute. His research interest is on Inter-Korean Relations, Regionalism in the European Union (EU), as well as on ASEAN and Asia-Pacific.

Why the Weird and Uncompromising Get Elected

Why is it that the US and Britain have
chosen weird uncompromising leaders when the essence of statesmanship is
calculated compromise. Worse, if not shocking, is that 43 percent of India’s
new parliament elected in May are facing criminal charges, including rape and
murder. Out of the 303 lawmakers in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party,
116 face charges. He himself was not considered suitable for a US visa
because of the organized 2002 killings/pogrom of Muslims in Gujarat while
he was leader; he was given a visa only after he became prime minister.

Trump has just fired John Bolton his third
National Security Adviser in two-and-a-half years. Ever since taking
office, he has been abrogating agreements unilaterally. Iran now refuses
to talk to him, and announced that the removal of Bolton, a notorious Iran
hawk, makes no difference. This lack of trust after Trump walked out of
the previous agreement, one with the imprimatur of the Security council and
major world powers, is to be expected but there is also the matter of
dignity. No self-respecting nation can tie itself to the whims of an
erratic leader.

Boris Johnson meanwhile is flouting the
norms and traditions of parliament. He has prorogued the current session
not for two or three days as customary but for nearly five weeks until October
14. Uproar and an appeal to the courts against this upending of democracy
followed. A Scottish judge has now ruled the prorogation illegal.
Tellingly, the 21 Tory members, who were turned out of the Tory party in
parliament, joined the opposition to pass a law requiring Boris to seek an
extension preventing the no-deal Brexit on October 31 if he has not come up
with an agreement by October 19. Boris’ hands have been tied, his
government losing control of the parliamentary agenda. His scheme to end
debate on the issue by proroguing parliament has backfired badly, leaving
commentators wondering if Boris has been the worst prime minister this century.

One of the persons Boris threw out of his
party was Nicolas Soames, a grandson of Winston Churchill and a 37-year member
of parliament, another was its longest serving member. No grace in the
graceless as they say.

Trump on the other hand is fixated on
golf. Until July this year, he had spent over $105 million of
taxpayers’ money on his golfing trips. Extrapolated over his entire
tenure including re-election, he could cost the taxpayer $340 million according
to Forbes, which is far from a left-wing magazine.

So why do people elect such leaders?
Perhaps the underlying cause is income stagnation for the majority (adjusted
for inflation) since the late 1970s. Yes, GDP has grown but the benefits
have been skewed to the upper 20 percent quintile. When the voters have
not found an answer from mainstream Democrats and Republicans, they have
resorted to mavericks like Obama and now Trump. In the UK it is Johnson
— heaven help them if his no-deal Brexit prevails for it is expected to be an
economic disaster.

When blame is focused on immigration, as
in Britain, Hungary, Poland and now the US, extreme right-wingers take center
stage with crude but appealing rhetoric, and often get elected. So there
we have it, while Trump denied funding by Congress is drawing funds from the
defense budget to build his wall on the Mexican border.

Credo quia
absurdum, warned the ancient philosophers. “I believe because it is
absurd.” While US President Donald Trump continues to express inexplicable
confidence in his North Korean counterpart
(and a simultaneous lack of faith in his own intelligence community), he
also fails to understand something rudimentary: The stability of any upcoming crisis decision-making process between Washington
and Pyongyang will have less to do with “loving” leader relations than
with Kim Jung Un’s unmistakably core
commitment to personal military power.

In this increasingly worrisome conflict
“dyad,” one of the most understated and under-referenced risks to the
United States concerns inadvertent or
unintended nuclear war.

On such urgent risks, words matter. Initially, in seeking to
fashion a coherent security policy, President Trump and his strategic advisors
should approach all pertinent issues at the primary or conceptual level. Inter alia, it will soon become
necessary for Mr. Trump to understand that the various nuclear war risks[1] posed by
inadvertence must be differentiated from the expected hazards of a deliberate
nuclear war. These latter perils could stem only from those Washington-Pyongyang hostilities that had
been (1) intentionally initiated with nuclear weapons; and/or (2) intentionally
responded to by express retaliation with nuclear weapons.

This is the case whether such unprecedented military actions were
undertaken to achieve strategic surprise,[2] or instead
as the result (expected or unexpected) of enemy irrationality.[3]

Prima facie, these are
distinctly many-sided and
“dense” calculations. In any deliberate nuclear war scenario, and before
any presidential ordering of an American preemption,[4] the
designated North Korean leadership would first need to appear(a) nuclear-capable and (b) irrational. Without this second expectation,
any US preemption against an already-nuclear adversary would be irrational on its face[5].
Washington, therefore, must continuously monitor not only tangible North Korean
nuclear assets and capabilities, but also the substantially less tangible
mental health characteristics of Kim Jong Un.

Although some might mock this second intelligence imperative as
unnecessary or “clinically impossible,” it remains conceivable that
the dictator in Pyongyang could at some point pretend irrationality.

The decipherable differences here would not be narrowly academic
or entirely linguistic.

Factually, moreover, it is Kim Jong Un’s counterpart in the White House
(and not Kim himself) who has publicly mused about the potential rationality of
pretended irrationality, and who takes oddly
conspicuous comfort from his assessment that the two presidents “fell in
love” back in Singapore.

This is not the
sort of “romance” upon which to build a core US national security
policy.

There is more. When the US president and his national security
advisors consider the co-existing and fearful prospects of an inadvertent nuclear
war with North Korea, their principal focus should remain oriented toward more
institutional directions – that is, to the expected stability and reliability
of Pyongyang’s command, control and intelligence procedures. Should it then be
determined that these “C3I” processes display unacceptably high risks
of mechanical/electrical/computer failure; indecipherable pre-delegations of
nuclear launch authority; and/or unpredictable/unreliable launch-on-warning procedures
(sometimes also called “launch-on-confirmed-attack”), a still-rational
American president could feel the more compelling need to consider a plausibly appropriate
preemption option.[6]

Another complex factor in any such prospective decision-making
process would be (a) the apparent advent of hypersonic weapons in North Korean
arsenals; and (b) the extent to which this emergence were paralleled in
American arsenals and/or strategic calculations.

At this already advanced stage in North Korean nuclear military
progress, the probable costs to the
United States and certain of its allies accruing from a defensive first-strike would be more-or-less
overwhelming and thus potentially “unacceptable.” This foreseeable
understanding seems to have escaped Trump, who first stated publicly at the end
of May 2019 that North Korean tests of short-range missiles “do not
worry” him. This blithe and manifestly ill-conceived observation suggests
that the American president (c) is erroneously focused only on direct (long-range)
missile threats to the United States, and (d) is unmindful of conspicuously challenging
escalatory possibilities, especially the immediate importance of shorter-range
missile threats.

Why so urgently important?

In the first place, North
Korea’s short-range missiles could target US allies South Korea and Japan; also,
US military forces in the region. While an attack on these forces would carry a
near-automatic assurance of a more or less measured American retaliation,
aggression against regional US allies would almost
certainly call for such a reprisal. In essence, therefore, Kim Jung Un’s short-range
missiles could sometime bring the United States into a full-blown war, even
though these missiles would never have been launched against the American
homeland.

In the second place, it is improbable but not inconceivable that
South Korea could wittingly or unwittingly initiate a conventional conflict
with North Korea, thereby realistically
mandating a US military involvement in the conflict. Were this to happen, Seoul
would have effectively “catalyzed” a North-Korea-US war. In any such
many-sided belligerency, even nuclear weapons could be fired. Also worth
studying in the unprecedented realm of catalytic
nuclear war would be a narrative wherein an altogether different state or
sub-state could arrange an anonymous first-strike against South Korea, Japan
and/or regional US forces.

What about a US preemption? In principle, at least, certain calculable
preemption options could not be dismissed out of hand in any balance-of-power
world system.[7]
More precisely, any residual American resort to “anticipatory
self-defense”[8]
could be nuclear or non-nuclear and could be indicated without any express regard
for Kim Jung Un’s presumed rationality. Still, the well-reasoned
cost-effectiveness of any US preemption would almost certainly be enlarged by including
such carefully calculated presumptions.

What would be the most plausible reactions concerning a
Trump-ordered preemption against North Korea? When all significant factors are
taken into account, Pyongyang, likely having no meaningful option to launching at
least some massive forms of armed response, would intentionally target certain designated
American military forces in the region and/or high-value South Korean armaments
and personnel. President Trump, still assuming enemy rationality, should then expect
that whatever North Korea’s precise configuration of selected targets, Kim Jung
Un’s retaliatory blow would be designed
to minimize or avoid any massive (including even nuclear) American counter-retaliations.

There is more. All such high-consequence calculations would involve
adversarial policy intersections which could be genuinely “synergistic”[9] and assume
perfect rationality on all sides. If, for example, the American president
should sometime decide to strike first, the response from Kim Jung Un should
then expectedly be proportionate; that is, more-or-less similarly massive. In
this particular escalatory “game,” the willful introduction of
nuclear weapons into any ensuing conflagration might not be dismissed out of
hand by either “player.”

What then?

Noteworthy, too, at least
at that markedly uncertain and unstable point, any such a game-changing
introduction would more likely originate from the American side. This sobering inference
is based upon the understanding that while North Korea already has some nuclear
weapons and missile delivery vehicles, it is also still rational and not yet prepared
operationally to seek “escalation dominance” vis-à-vis the United
States. For the moment, at least, it
would seemingly be irrational for Pyongyang to launch any of its nuclear
weapons first.

Sometime, at least in principle, Mr. Trump, extending his usually favored
stance of an argumentum ad bacculum
(an appeal to force) could opt rationally
for a so-called “mad dog” strategy. Here, the American president,
following his just-ordered preemption, would deliberately choose a strategy of
pretended irrationality.

Any such determined reliance, while intuitively sensible and arguably
compelling, could backfire, and thereby open up a slippery path to a now unstoppable
escalation. This self-propelling competition in risk-taking could also be
triggered by the North Korean president, then pretending to be a “mad
dog” himself. Significantly, any feigned irrationality stance by Kim Jong
Un might be undertaken exclusively by the North Korean side, or in an entirely unplanned
tandem or “synergy” with the United States. In all conceivable
variants of crisis bargaining between Washington and Pyongyang, even those without
any synergies, the highest-level decision-making processes would be
meaningfully interdependent.

This means still greater levels of complexity and still lesser
significance assignable to any presumptive “love” relationship
between the two presidential adversaries.[10]

Regarding complexity, in absolutely all of these plausible
bargaining postures, each side would have to pay reciprocally close attention
to the anticipated wishes and intentions of Russia and China. Accordingly, one must now
inquire, does President Trump actually believe that China would find it gainful
to support him in any still-pending nuclear crisis with North Korea? To answer
such a query, it ought to be quite plain that Mr. Trump’s ongoing and
potentially accelerating trade war with China would be manifestly unhelpful.

Regarding further complexity, what transpires between Washington
and Pyongyang in crisis decision-making circumstances could be impacted by certain
other ongoing or escalating wars in Asia. In this connection, most portentously
relevant would be any substantial escalations of the Kashmir conflict,
especially those that might involve an introduction of nuclear weapons. Unquestionably, any correlative crossing
of the nuclear threshold in that India-Pakistan conflict dyad would fracture a
longstanding taboo in world politics, and presumptively heighten the likelihood
of a US-North Korean nuclear exchange.

Notwithstanding President Donald Trump’s exaggerated confidence in
basing foreign policy decision-making upon extrapolations from commerce, it is all
genuinely complex, stunningly complex,[11] even
bewilderingly complex. Also reasonable to assume is that in any such many-sided
circumstances, the North Korean president would no longer be pretending irrationality.
He could, at some point, have become authenticallyirrational. Regardless of difficulty, however, the differences
here would be well worth figuring out.

Relevant scenarios must soon be posited and examined
dialectically. If President Donald Trump’s initial defensive first strike
against North Korea were less than massive, a still rational adversary in
Pyongyang would likely take steps to ensure that its own preferred reprisal
were correspondingly limited. But if Trump’s consciously rational and
calibrated attack upon North Korea were wittingly or unwittingly launched
against an irrational enemy leadership, the response from Pyongyang could then be
an all-out retaliation. This unanticipated response, whether non-nuclear or non-nuclear-nuclear
“hybrid,” would be directed at some as yet indeterminable combination
of US and allied targets.

Inevitably, and by any sensible measure, this response could inflict
grievous harms.

It is now worth considering that a North Korean missile reprisal
against US interests and personnel would not automatically exclude the American
homeland. However, should the North Korean president maintain a determinedly rational
“ladder” of available options, he would almost certainly resist
targeting any vulnerable civilian portions of the United States. Still, should he
remain determinably willing to strike targets in South Korea and/or Japan, he
would incur very substantial risks of an American nuclear counter-retaliation.

In principle, any such US response would follow directly from this
country’s assorted treaty-based obligations regarding “collective
self-defense.”[12]

There is more. Such risks would be much greater if Kim’s own
aggressions had extended beyond hard military assets, either intentionally or
as unwitting “collateral damage” brought to various soft civilian
populations and/or infrastructures.

Even if the unimaginably
complex game of nuclear brinksmanship in Northeast Asia were being played only
by fully rational adversaries, the rapidly accumulating momentum of events between
Washington and Pyongyang could still demand that each “contestant” strive
relentlessly for escalation dominance.
It is in the notably unpracticed dynamics of such an explosive rivalry that the
prospect of an “Armageddon” scenario could be actualized. This outcome
could be produced in unexpected increments of escalation by either or both of
the dominant national players, or instead, by any sudden quantum leap in destructiveness
applied by the United States and/or North Korea.[13]

Looking ahead, the only foreseeable element of the “game”
that is predictable in such complicated US-North Korean calculations is the
contest’s inherent and boundless unpredictability. Even under the very best or
optimal assumptions of enemy rationality, all relevant decision-makers would have
to concern themselves with dense or confused communications, inevitable miscalculations,
cascading errors in information, unauthorized uses of strategic weapons, mechanical,
electrical or computer malfunctions and certain poorly-recognized applications of
cyber-defense and cyber-war.

Technically, one further analytic distinction is needed between
inadvertent nuclear war and accidental nuclear war. By definition, an
accidental nuclear war would be inadvertent, but reciprocally, an inadvertent
nuclear war need not be accidental.[14] False
warnings, for example, which could be spawned by mechanical, electrical or
computer malfunction (or by hacking)[15] would
not signify the origins of an inadvertent nuclear war. Instead, they would fit
under clarifying narratives of an accidental
nuclear war.

“Everything is very simple in war,” says Carl von
Clausewitz in On War, “but the simplest
thing is still difficult.” With this seemingly banal but profound
observation, the classical Prussian strategist makes plain that serious
military planning is always problematic. Largely, this is because of what he
famously called “friction.” In essence, friction describes “the difference between war as it actually
is, and war on paper.”

Unless President Trump is able to understand this core concept and
prepare to manage unpredictable risks of an unintentional war with North Korea,
any future “love letters” from Kim Jung Un would be beside the point.
While the specific risks of a deliberate
or intentional nuclear conflict between
the United States and North Korea should remain front and center in Washington,
these risks ought never be assessed apart from these closely associated hazards
of crisis decision-making. All of these risks could be overlapping, mutually
reinforcing or even synergistic, daunting circumstances in which the plausible
“whole” of their effect would be tangibly greater than the simple sum
of their constituent “parts.”

There is one last matter to be clarified. This has to do with the
nature of “superpower”
relations within the underlying balance of power structure of world politics.[16]
Whatever the differences in preferred nomenclature, it is apparent that we are
now entering (wittingly or unwittingly) an era of “Cold War II.”[17]
Depending upon the dominant configurations of this new Cold War, US-North Korea
nuclear decision-making will be more-or-less destabilizing. It follows, for
President Donald Trump and the United States, that Washington-Pyongyang nuclear
bargaining must takes its dominant cues from two different though intersecting
directions.

In the end, a great deal will depend upon the American side’s
willingness to base relevant policies upon intellectual or analytic
foundations.

In the end, such willingness will trump any alleged benefits of
having fallen “in love.”

[1]
Whatever these particular risks, they could be intersecting, “force
multiplying” or even “synergistic.” Where an authentic synergy
were involved, the “whole” of any attack outcome could then be
greater than the tangible sum of its component “parts.”

[2] In
his seminal writings, strategic theorist Herman Kahn introduced a further
distinction between a surprise attack that is more-or-less unexpected, and one
that arrives “out of the blue.” The former, he counseled, “…is
likely to take place during a period of tension that is not so intense that the
offender is fully prepared for nuclear war….” A total surprise attack,
however, would be one without any immediately recognizable tension or signal.
This particular subset of the surprise attack scenario would be very difficult
to operationalize for national policy benefit. See: Herman Kahn, Thinking About the Unthinkable in the 1980s (Simon
& Schuster, 1984).

[3]
Recalling the 20th-century German philosopher, Karl Jaspers: “The rational
is not thinkable without its other, the non-rational, and it never appears in
reality without it.” This insight can be found in Jaspers’
“Historical Reflections” on Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.

[4]
Worth noting here too is that any such ordering of a preemptive attack by an
American president would be exceedingly problematic under US law (especially under
pertinent US Constitutional constraints).
There are, therefore, critical jurisprudential as well as strategic
implications involved.

[5]
Nonetheless, the American
president could conceivably still benefit from a preemption against an already
nuclear North Korea if refraining from striking first would allow North Korea
to implement certain additional protective measures. Designed to guard
against preemption, these measures could involve the attachment of “hair
trigger” launch mechanisms to nuclear weapon systems and/or the adoption
of “launch on warning” policies, possibly coupled with identifiable pre-delegations
of launch authority. This means, increasingly, that the US could be incrementally
endangered by steps taken by Pyongyang to prevent a preemption. Optimally, this
country would do everything possible to prevent such steps, especially because
of the expanded risks of accidental or unauthorized attacks against its own or
allied armaments and populations. But if such steps were to become a fait accompli, Washington might still
calculate correctly that a preemptive strike would be both legal and
cost-effective. This is because the expected enemy retaliation, however
damaging, could still appear more tolerable than the expected consequences of
enemy first-strikes – strikes likely occasioned by the failure of
“anti-preemption” protocols.

[6] From the standpoint of international law, it is necessary to distinguish preemptive attacks from
“preventive ones.” Preemption is a military strategy of striking first in the expectation
that the only foreseeable alternative is to be struck first oneself. A preemptive
attack is launched by a state that believes enemy forces are about to
attack. A preventive attack, however, is launched not out of any genuine
concern about “imminent” hostilities,
but rather for fear of a longer-term deterioration in a pertinent military
balance. In a preemptive attack, the
length of time by which the enemy’s action is anticipated is presumptively very
short; in a preventive strike, the anticipated interval is considerably longer. A related problem here for the United
States is not only the practical difficulty of accurately determining imminence, but also that delaying a defensive strike until appropriately ascertained imminence can be acknowledged could prove “fatal”
or existential.

[7] The
core concept of a balance of power –
an idea of which the nuclear-age balance
of terror is a particular variant – has never been more than a facile metaphor.
Significantly, it has never had anything to do with creating or ascertaining “equilibrium.”
Moreover, as such balance is always a matter of individual and subjective perceptions,
adversary states can never be sufficiently confident that pertinent strategic
circumstances are actually “balanced” in their favor. In consequence,
inter alia, each side to any conflict
must “normally” fear that it will be left behind; accordingly, the perpetual
search for balance generally produces ever-wider patterns of national insecurity
and global disequilibrium.

[8] This
term is drawn from customary international law, an authoritative source of
world legal norms identified at Art. 38 of the UN’s Statute of the International Court of Justice. Already, international law, an integral part
of the legal system of all states in world politics, assumes a general
obligation to supply benefits to one another, and to avoid war at all costs.
This core assumption of jurisprudential solidarity is known formally as a
“peremptory” or jus cogens
expectation, that is, one that is not even subject to question. It can be found
in Justinian, Corpus Juris Civilis,
Hugo Grotius, The Law of War and Peace (1625)
and Emmerich de Vattel, The Law of
Nations or Principles of Natural Law (1758).

[9] In
any synergistic intersection – whether in chemistry, medicine or war – the
“whole” of any result would exceed the simple sum of its
policy-determining “parts.”

[10] Pertinent
synergies could clarify or elucidate the world political system’s current state
of disorder (a view that would reflect what the physicists prefer to call
“entropic” conditions), and could themselves be dependent upon each
national decision-maker’s own subjective metaphysics of time. For an early
article by this author dealing with interesting linkages between such a
subjective metaphysics and national decision-making (linkages that could shed
additional light on growing risks of a US-North Korea nuclear war), see: Louis
René Beres, “Time, Consciousness and Decision-Making in Theories of International
Relations,” The Journal of Value
Inquiry, Vol. VIII, No.3., Fall 1974, pp. 175-186.

[11]
Reciprocally, of course, the White House has been seeking to persuade Americans
and others by way of very deliberate simplifications. See, on the plausible consequences of any
such deceptive measures, Ludwig Wittgenstein’s pertinent observation in On Certainty: “Remember that one is sometimes
convinced of the correctness of a
view by its simplicity or symmetry….”

[12] For
the differences between “collective self defense” and
“collective security,” see this writer’s early book: Louis René Beres,
The Management of World Power: A
Theoretical Analysis (University of Denver Monograph Series in World
Affairs)( (1973).

[13] This
brings to mind the philosophical query by Irish playwright Samuel Beckett in Endgame: “What is the good of
passing from one untenable position to another, of seeking justification always
on the same plane?”

[14]
Reminds Herman Kahn in his On Escalation
(1965): “All accidental wars are inadvertent and unintended, but not
vice-versa.”

[15] This
prospect now includes the plausible advent of so-called “cyber- mercenaries.”

[17] In
essence, postulating the emergence of “Cold War II” means expecting
the world system to become once again bipolar.
For early writings, by this author, on the global security implications of such
an expanding bipolarity, see: Louis René Beres, “Bipolarity,
Multipolarity, and the Reliability of Alliance Commitments,” Western Political Quarterly, Vol. 25,
No.4., December 1972, pp. 702-710; Louis René Beres, “Bipolarity,
Multipolarity, and the Tragedy of the Commons,” Western Political Quarterly, Vol. 26, No.4., December 1973, pp,
649-658; and Louis René Beres, “Guerillas, Terrorists, and Polarity: New
Structural Models of World Politics,” Western
Political Quarterly, Vol. 27, No.4., December 1974, pp. 624-636.

Related

The puzzle in the U.S. Democratic Party is complicated

Although polls in the United States show Joe Biden outnumbering other
Democratic candidates, Biden is still concerned about the likelihood of rising
US senator Bernie Sanders. Joe Biden knows very well that if Sanders and
Elizabeth Warren, another Democrat candidate, ally and unite, Biden’s chances
of winning will be reduced.

If Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth can win Biden in Iowa and New Hampshire,
then there is essentially no chance for Biden to win the next presidential
election.

Some US analysts believe Trump is more afraid of Sanders (than Biden),
and will surely attract more independent supporters if Sanders reaches the
final stage of next year’s presidential race.

Bernie Sanders, the old American senator, and one of Democratic nominees
for the 2016 presidential election continues to oppose US President Donald
Trump. This confrontation started at the time Trump entered the White House (by
early 2017). Sanders, in one of his most recent positions against the White
House, called for an end to Washington’s support for Riyadh in the Yemeni war.
Sanders also condemned Trump’s stance on the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. At any
rate, Sanders’s recent position against Trump has led to the US President’s concerns.

Polls recently conducted in the United States indicate Sanders’ proper
position among Democratic voters. Accordingly, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders
have both a good position among Democrat supporters and they both have a good
chance to reach the final round of the 2020 presidential elections.

It should be remembered, however, that even if Sanders is defeated in
the presidential election in 2020, he will remain one of Donald Trump’s main
opponents in Congress.

Bernie Sanders is now trying to forget the bitter memories of the last
presidential election. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate who was
supported by her husband, Bill Clinton, and many influential figures in the
party, managed to defeat Sanders with her secret lobbies and went to fight Trump
as Democrats’ final candidate.

Anyhow, if Sanders were to reach the final round of the 2016
presidential competitions, he could have defeated Trump and enter the White
House. Sanders, however, was the victim of Democrat leaders and Hillary
Clinton’s secret lobbies. It was not without a reason that many Sanders
advocates voted for Hillary Clinton’s rival, Donald Trump!Here is some news and
analysis on Sanders and the Democratic Party’s latest political situation:

It’s now Biden, Warren, Sanders — and everyone else

As Politico reported, The bottom is falling out of the Democratic
presidential primary. And the top-tier — no longer five candidates, but three —
is becoming more insurmountable.

For more than a year, Democrats had approached their nominating contest
with a widely-shared belief that — like Republicans in the earliest stages of
their primary four years ago — they, too, might take turns rising and falling
in an expansive field. That expectation sustained the campaigns of more than
two dozen contenders this year.

But in recent weeks, the leading band of candidates has contracted
unexpectedly early. Heading into the fall, only three contenders are polling
above single digits: Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders.

Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg remain at the periphery, while
lower-polling candidates have largely failed to muster sustained, upward
movement in fundraising or polling.

According to interviews with about two dozen Democratic operatives and
consultants, there is little reason to expect any of them will.

“It was legitimate to say ‘Top 5’ for a long time, but with the
exception of Kamala Harris being at the outer perimeter of the top three …
you’d have to have a strange confluence of events for someone outside those
four to win,” said Philippe Reines, a longtime Hillary Clinton confidant. “It
would require all four failing. Like, you would need all four of them to be in
a plane crash or something.”

For every other candidate, Reines said, “It’s too late in the game to
keep saying it’s too early.”

By this point in the Republican primary in 2016, Jeb Bush was already
cratering. Scott Walker had risen and fallen. Donald Trump was in first, still
to fend off a surge from Ben Carson before running away from the field.The 2020
Democratic primary, by contrast, has been defined by its relative stability,
with two full fundraising periods and two sets of debates now done.

Anna Greenberg, a pollster who advised former Colorado Gov. John
Hickenlooper’s since-aborted presidential bid, said there was no boom-and-bust
for Democrats because the primary “started so early, before voters really
started paying attention,” and because of “the sheer volume of candidates.”

“It’s a little bit surprising because compared to ‘16 on the Republican
side, where it seemed like a number of people had their moment in the sun …
there hasn’t really been anybody who’s taken a meteoric rise,” said Scott
Brennan, an Iowa Democratic National Committee member, and former state party
chairman. Brennan said he’s spoken with several campaigns recently whose
advisers “feel like they’re poised and ready, they’re poised and they’re
waiting for their moment.”

But “for whatever reason,” he said, “they haven’t had that.”

In a spate of campaigning over the holiday weekend, Amy Klobuchar
released a plan to address climate change, Sanders previewed his plan to cancel
Americans’ medical debt and Beto O’Rourke reiterated his call for stricter gun
laws, telling CNN of the nation’s recent mass shootings, “Yes, this is f—–
up.”

On Labor Day, the candidates fanned out across the country, with Biden
heading to Iowa, Warren to New Hampshire, Cory Booker to Nevada and Harris to
California. The activity came on the heels of several candidates dropping out
after failing to get traction — and speculation about more to follow —
reinforcing the advantage held by the frontrunners.

Last week, Kirsten Gillibrand became the latest campaign casualty, a
week after Jay Inslee abandoned his effort. With five months before Iowa’s
first-in-the-nation caucuses, six candidates have already dropped out.

Democratic strategist Matthew Litman, a former speechwriter for Biden
who now backs Harris, described the field as “mostly settled” among
five candidates, including Harris and Buttigieg in that group. Unlike in 2016,
when many Republicans were wary of, if not opposed to, Trump, Democrats are
“mostly satisfied” with the range of ideologies and experiences represented by
the top tier, he said.“The other candidates are SOL, and it has been that way
for a couple of months,” Litman said.

For Biden, Sanders, and Warren, the advancing calendar appears likely to
compound their advantage, as early fundraising success and staff hiring allows
them to begin advertising and to intensify voter outreach.

The debates have contributed to the early winnowing of candidates.
Lower-tier candidates can barely focus on anything else besides meeting the
Democratic National Committee’s increasingly arduous fundraising and polling
benchmarks for debates.

“In a weird way because of the format of these debates and what it took
to deal with the debates,” said Paul Maslin, a top Democratic pollster, “only
recently has anyone started spending any significant money in the early states.
So, there wasn’t any reason why there would be significant [poll] movement] …
until now. And now, we’ll see.”

He said, “Really, the 1 percenters and below, they were the ones who
really suffered. No one really told them, ‘Hey, you’re in a race where it’s
impossible for you to grow at all. There is no room.”

After failing to make the next debate, in Houston, Tim Ryan and John
Delaney were compelled to release statements confirming they were still
running. Michael Bennet shredded the Democratic National Committee on stage at
its summer meeting, while Steve Bullock defiantly released a new round of staff
hires. Campaign aides for both said they’d redouble their efforts in Iowa.

“The rules became a proxy for success at a moment when campaigns were
just getting started,” Bennet said in an interview with POLITICO. “The DNC is
only interested in well-known candidates running.”

Even for candidates who have made the debates, their turns on the
national stage haven’t sparked enduring swings in the campaign. As a result,
they’ve spent recent weeks spinning their position in the polls.

“Which is more unlikely – 1) going from being a complete unknown to 6th
in the polls or 2) going from 6th in the polls to winning the whole thing?”
tweeted Andrew Yang, the entrepreneur who’s enjoyed improbable success but is
still running at 2 percent in the latest Morning Consult poll.

Hickenlooper, Inslee, and Gillibrand all participated in previous
debates, before dropping out. Juli?n Castro sparked interest with his chiding
of fellow Texan O’Rourke in the first set of debates, in June. And Harris
surged in public opinion polls when she criticized Biden for his past
opposition to busing and former associations with segregationist senators.

But for both candidates, the effect was short-lived. Harris is now back
at 8 percent, according to the latest Morning Consult survey. Castro is stuck
at 1 percent.

“It’s just that they happened so quickly,” said Doug Herman, a
Democratic strategist. “Trump has changed the timeline. Scandal doesn’t last.
Problems don’t last. Success doesn’t last. Everything’s a little more vaporized
in this timeframe.”

The progressive wing of the party already has two viable candidates in
Sanders and Warren. For more moderate Democrats, only a Biden implosion is
likely to create room for advancement.

“Somebody like Buttigieg or Harris, at this moment, they can only
succeed with a Biden collapse,” Herman said. “They have an if-then strategy.
They are not in control of their destiny.”

More movement will also require candidates to adopt a change in tone,
said Tom McMahon, a former DNC executive director.

“Everyone — both in the top-tier and among the also-rans — have to start
developing when and how they’re going to go negative,” he said. “Otherwise,
this race is going to continue to remain status quo.”

It is possible the dynamic will shift. Former Iowa Democratic Gov. Tom
Vilsack, who briefly ran for president in 2008, said that even in Iowa, “most
people, other than those who are ultra-interested, and ultra-focused, most
people are not paying attention to this at all.”
“It’s still an open game here,” he said.

He added, “Having said that, the folks who are at the bottom end of the
spectrum here have got to have their moment relatively soon, and here’s why:
Because Warren, Sanders and Biden and Mayor Pete have a foundation of fundraising
that’s going to continue to pump money into their campaigns.”

Of other candidates, Vilsack said, “They’ve got to move now, but there’s
still time for them to move.”

Why black voters are backing two old white guys

Also, Politico reported that A divide among African Americans between
Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders has major implications for the race heading into
the fall.

A generational divide among black voters is persisting in the
Democratic primary — between the two old white men.

Joe Biden has amassed a staggering lead among older African Americans,
commanding nearly two-thirds support of black voters 65 and older in the most
recent Morning Consult poll. Bernie Sanders is the favorite of black
millennials, though his margin with that group is much smaller. Among all black
voters, Biden is leading Sanders, 41 percent to 20 percent.

Biden and Sanders have maintained their edges even as other candidates —
including two African American senators, Kamala Harris, and Cory Booker, have
courted black voters more aggressively in recent months. Though opinions could
change in the runup to voting, the preferences of African Americans this deep
into the campaign has major implications for the election: As black voters go,
so goes the mantle of Democratic front-runner — and likely the presidential
nominee.

The irony of two white septuagenarians commanding majority support among
African Americans — despite running in a historically diverse Democratic field
— isn’t lost on black elected officials, operatives and voters. Several of them
interviewed for this story said it speaks to the belief among many black voters
that Biden is both best positioned to beat Donald Trump in a general election
and to the loyalty he earned after eight years as Barack Obama’s No. 2.

“You go with what you know. A lot of black voters know Joe Biden,” said
Michael Nutter, a former Philadelphia mayor and a current Democratic National
Committee member who’s endorsed Biden. “There’s power in that and there’s
loyalty in that.”

Sanders won a following among younger black voters during his 2016 run,
when his progressive activism and criminal justice record fired up millennials
of all races.

At least in the primary, Biden’s lead among older black Democrats is
more consequential than Sanders’ edge among younger ones, because older voters
typically vote in much greater numbers. That’s especially true in South
Carolina, the first-in-the-South primary state where about 60 percent of the
Democratic electorate is black. Polls show Biden is doing even better with
African American voters there than he is nationally, giving him a potential
crucial edge that he hopes to parlay into a string of victories throughout the
Southeast and in big cities, where sizable chunks of the Democratic electorate
are black.

Similar generational and ideological splits exist among white voters.
But African American voters have coalesced to a greater degree behind Biden and
Sanders — a dynamic that stands out because of their influence in the early
stages of the primary and because they’re not behind Harris or Booker.

Without more black support, the path to the nomination becomes
exceedingly tenuous for the African American senators, who are polling in the
single digits overall. Nationally, Harris is the third choice of young black
voters, behind Sanders and Biden. Among young black voters in South Carolina,
Elizabeth Warren is polling ahead of Sanders. Both of the female candidates
have made considerable efforts to court African Americans, especially black
women, who are likely to turn out at higher rates than other demographics.

Harris is writing a monthly column for Essence magazine, which caters to
black women and has more than 5 million monthly readers, dubbed Kamala’s
Corner. To drive engagement and donor support within the black community, she’s
also made sure voters know she’s an alumna of Howard University, a historically
black institution, and a member of a black sorority.

Warren has also written for Essence and held events with black activists
as she touts plans to close the racial wealth gap.

Booker’s polling among black voters is at under 6 percent despite his
efforts to promote his work on bipartisan criminal justice reform as well as
his two terms as mayor of predominantly African American Newark, N.J.

Antjuan Seawright, a South Carolina Democratic strategist and former
senior adviser to Hillary Clinton, cautioned that there’s still lots of time
for other candidates to make inroads with black voters.

“When you think about Cory Booker, when you think about Kamala Harris,
when you think about Elizabeth Warren and others,” he said, “one thing I’ve
learned is that when you count people out, they usually teach you that you
don’t know how to count.”

Seawright said one explanation for Sanders’ African American support is,
“one could argue, he has never stopped running for president.” But while
Sanders “enjoyed tremendous millennial support last election cycle,” he added,
“that didn’t translate to necessarily showing up at the polls. So support is one
thing. Voting for a candidate is another.”

Both Biden and Sanders have held rallies at historically black Clinton
College in Rock Hill, S.C. But few students attended Biden’s town hall there
Thursday; instead, it was mostly older people who showed up. Sanders’ event in
June drew a younger crowd.

“Younger voters like what Sanders is saying about free college and
legalizing marijuana,” said Jatoya White, a 19-year-old biology student who
attended Biden’s rally but prefers Sanders. “With the older voters and Biden,
it’s Obama.”

Biden on Thursday finished a two-day tour of South Carolina as part of a
renewed emphasis on black voters. It included a sit-down with African American
journalists in South Carolina and, before that, in Washington, where he said
racism is a “white man’s problem.”

Sanders, meanwhile, is betting on his favorability with young black
Democrats to narrow Biden’s lead. His failure to capture the black vote in 2016
crippled his chances of winning the nomination and showed, as other Democratic hopefuls
have learned before, that relying too heavily on white liberal voters is not a
winning strategy for any candidate.

Phillip Agnew, an activist, and surrogate with the Sanders campaign
cited a recent encounter between Sanders and students at the University of
South Carolina as emblematic of the way some young black voters feel about him.
In the middle of move-in day at the university, when a group of black students
heard the senator was inside a nearby Starbucks, they rushed over to thank him
for his push to erase college debt.

“These are people who are about to go to college, who have the
wherewithal to see Bernie as somebody whose platform, should he be elected, is
going to make their lives and that dark cloud of [student loan] debt hanging
over them not be there,” Agnew said.

Cathy Cohen, a founder of GenForward, whose research focuses on
millennial voting behavior by race, emphasized that it’s still early days in
the primary. South Carolina, the fourth state to vote in the Democratic race,
doesn’t hold its primary until Feb. 29.

“I would argue that it’s anyone’s game,” Cohen said.

But Biden’s team points out his numbers haven’t budged much in the four
months since he entered the race. In the Morning Consult poll, black voters 65
and older back Biden over Sanders by 56 percentage points, 63 percent to 7
percent. Sanders, meanwhile, is beating Biden by 12 points among African
Americans younger than 30.

Black voters who’ve already made their choice told POLITICO that getting
behind a white male candidate over a black woman or man is nothing personal.
This time around, black Democrats feel the stakes are too high to be concerned
about optics. They are focused on supporting the candidate they feel will
champion the policies they care most about — and make Trump a one-term
president.

“We want to win. We just want to win,” Nutter, the former Philadelphia
mayor, said. “Because Donald Trump is so damaging and so frightening to many
people in this country … the primary theme is, ‘I just want to be with someone
who I believe can actually win.’ And that’s what people care about.”